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Abstract

We discuss a phenomenon that appears when ‘even’ occurs in questions. Specifically, an inference of what we call “extreme ignorance” is projected onto the speaker. We argue that this effect arises when the known unlikelihood ‘even’ focuses an entire question, resulting in the focused question being the least likely to be asked. Specific implicatures then conspire to bring about the inference that the speaker does not know the answer to the question that is most expected to be known. The environments explored are Wh-questions and Y/N questions, and the languages looked at primarily English, Greek, German and Russian.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 32-D808, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Sabine Iatridou

  2. Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1, Leninskie Gory, Moscow, Russia, 119991

    Sergei Tatevosov

  3. Moscow State Pedagogical University, Moscow, Russia

    Sergei Tatevosov

Authors
  1. Sabine Iatridou
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  2. Sergei Tatevosov
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Correspondence to Sabine Iatridou.

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Iatridou, S., Tatevosov, S. Our even . Linguist and Philos 39, 295–331 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-016-9190-7

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